Tens of thousands of Connecticut residents refuse to register guns under new law

Tens of thousands of Connecticut residents could soon be considered felons by the state if they continue to ignore restrictive new gun control laws passed last year shortly after an armed rampage at an area elementary school left more than two dozen dead.

Last April, Governor Dannel Malloy signed into law a slew of new firearm restrictions that require, among other items,
residents to register powerful assault weapons and high-capacity
magazine with the state. Connecticutians had until the end of
last year — almost one year to the day after the Sandy Hook
elementary school massacre — to license their arsenals. Only a
fraction has followed the new law, however, and they could all
soon face serious consequences if the state decides to take
action.

On Thursday this week, journalist Dan Haar of Connecticut’s The
Courant newspaper wrote that state police had received only
47,916 completed registration forms by the end of last year.
According to his reporting, that statistic is just a sliver of
what it should be.

If the state has received 50,000 registrations by now, Haar
wrote, then that could represent as little as 15 percent of the
assault weapons now classified by the state as warranting new
paperwork under last April’s law.

“No one has anything close to definitive figures, but the
most conservative estimates place the number of unregistered
assault weapons well above 50,000, and perhaps as high as
350,000,” Harr wrote.

“And that means as of Jan. 1, Connecticut has very likely
created tens of thousands of newly minted criminals — perhaps
100,000 people, almost certainly at least 20,000 — who have
broken no other laws By owning unregistered guns defined as
assault weapons, all of them are committing Class D
felonies,” he added.

Other reports out of New England this week suggested that
lawmakers there are wrestling with how to handle registration
forms that weren’t sent in ahead of the end-of-year deadline and
therefore now considered illegal unless officials find a
loophole.

“We’re trying to figure a way to accommodate the small number
of people. Do we do it legislatively? Can we do it
administratively?” Rep. Stephen Dargan, co-chairman of the
Public Safety Committee, told the CT News junkie website this week.
“Whatever our focus is, it has to be narrow in scope because
it might open it up to other people’s concerns.”

As Harr reports, however, officials may have a much larger
problem: while an estimated few hundred residents may have sent
their registration forms in a day or two past deadline, a group
of people estimated to be several times that size reportedly show
no interest in submitting applications at all.

"I honestly thought from my own standpoint that the vast
majority would register," said State Sen. Tony Guglielmo
(R-Stafford) of the legislature's public safety committee said to
Harr. "If you pass laws that people have no respect for and
they don't follow them, then you have a real problem."

But even if some Connecticutians find the gun law improper,
federal courts have so far said that’s not the case. Late last
month United States District Judge Alfred Covello issued a
47-page ruling calling Gov. Malloy’s legislation constitutional,
even though it imposed some restrictions on firearm owners.

"While the act burdens the plaintiffs' Second Amendment
rights, it is substantially related to the important governmental
interest of public safety and crime control," Covello ruled.